Scrubbing Bubbles One-Step Toilet Bowl Cleaner: Spraying Your Crap All Over the Bathroom

When I was in college, I took an honors freshman seminar on interpersonal communication or something like that (I can't remember the actual course title, but it was some kind of typical honors New Age-y bullshit name), and one of the only things I remember is watching a video with an example speech about how your toilet, when flushed, constantly spews microscopic bits of fecal matter all over your toothbrush and presumably in your face as well. I brushed my teeth in the water fountain for about week after that.

The truth, of course, is that the bathroom is nowhere near the dirtiest room in your house. Says Professor Charles Gerba: "If an alien came from space and studied the bacterial counts, he probably would conclude he should wash his hands in your toilet and crap in your sink." Duly noted.

Regardless, given enough time, every toilet gets suitably disgusting. It's easy to put off forking over like 15 bucks for that disposable toilet wand thing at the grocery store, but alas, we are only in college for so long. So I was excited to receive the Scrubbing Bubbles One-Step Toilet Bowl Cleaner through the Bzzagent program, because a) that site usually never sends me anything, and b) anything that keeps the toilet clean with a minimum of fuss and the least amount of toilet water on my arms has my undivided attention.

So basically, it's an upside-down aerosol can that you attach to the foot pedal, which has a thin rubber tube leading to a suction/clamp type contraption with a rotating spray head that you clip to the inner rim of your toilet bowl. It doesn't require any electricity, which is kind of cool, especially considering how much force the cleaning solution is shot out with. That, I found out the hard way.

I attached the mechanism to the bowl and pressed on the foot pedal with my hand while bent over the toilet. The solution proceeded to shoot OUT of the bowl and into my face. I love the feeling of Lysol in my eye. On the plus side, the advertising must be accurate, as I have indeed noticed that there has been no toilet scum growing on my face since then. I had to put a spacer in the clamp so that the contraption would sit lower in the bowl, but even at its lowest, it still shot solution on top of the seat and under the space in the cover. But I hate cleaning toilets so much I STILL didn't give up on the One-Step at this point.

I know what you're wondering right now, and I was wondering it too: since the spray head juts out into the toilet space by about an inch and a half, most healthy bran-powered logs will clear it with room to spare, but what happens when you eat Chipotle and carpetbomb that bowl? Does it have a magical shit-repelling force field or space age coating? The brochure didn't say. I had to find out for myself.

I didn't even get around to going to Chipotle; a sugar-free red velvet cupcake did the trick. And the answers are yes, you will shit all over it, and no, there is no magical shit-repelling coating.

So points for concept but perhaps not for execution. My toilet doesn't seem to be unusual in shape or size, but naturally, YMMV. For me, sadly, it's back to $15 toilet wands and then burning my arms afterwards.

EDIT: The BzzAgent program rejected this post in just 2 minutes! Their webcrawling ninja robots somehow determined that I was using too much profanity without even registering a hit on my visitor log. Incredible!


from BzzAgent Jono jono@bzzagent.com
reply-to jono@bzzagent.com
to REDACTED@gmail.com
date Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 11:32 PM
subject There Was an Issue With Your Campaign Activity

While we appreciate the effort, we unfortunately could not accept your Campaign Activity submission. Please read the message below to learn more.


Campaign: Scrubbing Bubbles One Step Toilet Bowl Cleaner

Activity Completed: Submit a Link
Score Earned: Rejected
Points Awarded: None

A note from our review team

Wow - we love you blog post but we don't accept profanity. ;-) If you can clean up the language so it's acceptable for our client, we'll bee happy to accept the post!